Exploring Claremont Village - Old & New - AND - Authentic Pho in Pomona

Michelle, Karen, and I took a comprehensive tour of Claremont this morning before the temperatures settled in on the day. Before 10:00 a.m., the Village is quiet - most of the stores don't open until later. We loosely followed the Claremont Heritage Self-Guided Tour http://www.claremontheritage.org/villagetour.html (great resource!), which took us to about a dozen sites, including Village West and the Packing House. We started at the train station on First (picture below), then walked north to see City Hall, the Claremont Post Office, and the Claremont Public Library.

It was fun for me to see the town through Karen and Michelle's eyes. They were particularly taken with an eclectic house on Third Street (I believe) replete with cat, American flag, and seashell wind chimes - everything nestled into a postage stamp-sized lot. Even though I've passed the house dozens of times in my years living here - I never actually looked at it closely until today.

 

The Packing House west of Indian Hill is always a treat - I love the way the floors gleam in the morning sunlight that streams through the skylights. There are always interesting things to see inside and out at the Packing House.

 

  

After the big loop around town, we revisited the library, which had been closed on our first trip through. I promised to take the girls there one afternoon to hang out and read. We ended the Village trip with a stop at Boone Companion - my once-favorite toy store, now under new ownership - not bad, just different. I bought Clue and Life - more games to play with Karen and Michelle.

Back home, I met with Karen and Michelle separately to discuss their writing on yesterday's blog. We also reviewed some of the vocabulary and reading comprehension homework.

We followed our lessons with lunch and a break, then Karen, Michelle, and Winona played several Wii games together. All of us played Apples to Apples, a fun game that builds vocabulary.

The girls and I met again in the afternoon for further English instruction. For dinner, we all went to Zach's and my favorite Vietnamese restaurant - Pho Ha - in Pomona. Karen and Michelle ended up choosing chicken fried rice, and tried the spring rolls and jicama rolls, as well as Zach's pho.

We had grand plans of playing charades when we got home, but after five minutes we found Karen and Michelle fast asleep, exhausted from another full day of English immersion - in the classroom and in the world.

so many choices... my head hurts...